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John Stemberger

-- Head of Florida Family Policy Council (part of Focus on the Family's national network)

-- Leader of "On My Honor," an organization formed to fight against an inclusive Boy Scouts

Facts

-- While opposing basic nondiscrimination ordinance, said of LGBT equality proponents: "These are not just people who have a same sex attraction and want to be left alone to freely define themselves. This is a radical group of political operatives who want to force their aberrant views on human sexuality upon the rest of society by the mandate and penalty of law."

-- Once compared laws barring gays from marriage rights to laws against suicide: "And so, we have laws against suicide. Well why is that? Well because I’m connected to, a woman in a marriage, I’m connected to a family with children, I’m connected to a business, a community, an economic system. If I blow my brains out, somebody’s got to come and pay for that and clean it up. There’s a cost -- to things -- and we don’t just live in an isolated situation."

-- He refers to homosexuality (@5:53) as "the pathology of homosexuality"

-- Is an aggressive opponent of allowing gays to adopt: "Two moms, or two dads, are an objectively inferior choice when compared to the option of a married mom and dad. Even single parents have the potential, and often desire to marry a person of the opposite sex, but “gay families” are inherently fatherless or motherless. Finally, Florida’s Attorney General presented research in court briefs showing that homosexuals as a population have disproportionally higher rates of social, mental and physical pathologies. " Says that foster parenting by same-sex couples should also be barrred: "Based upon the best interest standard the law probably ought to also prohibit gay foster care, but it does not."

-- When asked what motivates him, tells a story about a transgender kid who he describes as "confused" (@ 6:14): "A little boy in Miami who is five-years-old thought—objectively, fully boy in every way—thought he wanted to be a girl, and so, with the help of his parents and counselors in the public school system, they counseled him into a complete state of confusion in obscurity so now he is dressed as a girl, is called a girl's name, uses the girl's bathroom in the public school in Miami. That's what motivates me. Adds (@7:08) his belief that this child's gender identity is a "sinful little thought."

-- Says he opposes a nondiscrimination ordinances because he opposes "the artificial social construct called gay": “Same-sex attraction has always been with us since the beginning of time. That’s nothing new. … What is new, and what is dangerous and what we oppose, is this artificial, social construct called gay,” Stemberger said. “It’s in your face; it’s shoving down your throat; and it’s intimidation. It’s not just, ‘let’s be left alone and let’s just have rights.’ It’s now forcing everyone else to agree—by the force of law and lawsuits with money damages. That’s what we oppose.”

-- Warned of marriage equality for same-sex couples: "[W]hen marriage is redefined, polluted or defiled by any perversion of God’s design it does damage to the holy and divine purposes for which it was created."

-- A colleague quotes him as connecting same-sex marriage to incest: "Florida Family Policy Council president John Stemberger often asks 'Where it will stop? If gay marriage is legal, what will stop America from removing legal hurdles to incest or polygamy?'“

Commentator Accountability Project (CAP)

-- Says AIDS is "self-inflicted": "The fact is that the artist who made the vile video died of self-inflicted wounds: he died of AIDS. The homosexual, David Wojnarowicz, hated the Catholic Church (had he lived by its teachings, he would not have self-destructed)"

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